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There's a school of thought that says new intellectual properties in games
are best introduced early in a console generation. But after
seven years of the current generation, Dishonored executive
producer Julien Roby thinks gamers are ready for something
different.

"You look at the line-up for Christmas this year and it's like something
number six, something number five, something number seven," Roby
told IGN Australia. "I really think people are starving for
something new. Something new in terms of universe. Something new
in terms of gameplay. Something new in terms of visuals."

Roby shared his views with the gaming site during an Australian press event
last week. He added, "I think as long as the game is good,
whether it's a new IP or not, if the game is good, it gets a
good review and it's marketed properly people will want to look
at it."

Roby's perspective is to be expected, considering Dishonored, which
launches next month, will introduce a new intellectual property
for developer Arkane Studios and publisher Bethesda. The
first-person action game casts players as a supernatural
assassin and lets them dispatch their targets in a variety of
ways.

Roby's position on new IP runs counter to some other recently public
perspectives on the matter. Last week, GamesIndustry
International ran an interview with Frank Gibeau in which the EA
Labels president said the rewards of new IP at the end of a
console lifecycle don't justify the risks.

"If you look at the market dynamics, as much as there's a desire for new IP,
the market doesn't reward new IP this late in the cycle," Gibeau
said, adding, "they end up doing okay, but not really breaking
through."

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4 Comments

The game industry is currently seeing the biggest explosion in creativity and innovation it has ever experienced.
Every week over a thousand new games are published. Many of these are "me too" dross. But there are very many nuggets of pure gold in amongst them.
We should be rejoicing that the industry is the most dynamic and innovative that it has ever been.
The low barriers to entry of global publishing ($99 to Apple) has unleashed a veritable torrent of people trying new ideas. On the Apple App Store alone there are 186,297 active publishers. It is a whole new world.

Quality first Bruce, not quantity.
PSN, XBLIG, Steam, that's where I currently see innovation and creativity the most.
Besides some very rare exceptions, iOS is unfortunately still a place with just thousands of publishers and zillions of me-too apps.
It's going to change though. As I always say, there's a whole universe to explore between the two extremes (60$ AAA <-> F2P Throw away game)

People are always ready for something new, I think, as long as the quality and fun are present, with just enough familiarity so as not to alienate the crowd completely.

How about a game that doesn't primarily focus on killing? I'm actually really looking forward to Dishonored but I long for a game of this type where gameplay would not rely so heavily on eliminating people to progress. More emphasis on characters and interactions, less on weapons and executions.

I really liked what I saw in Gamescom and I'm eagerly waiting for this one.

Stealth games are quite infrequent since not everyone can balance them. Last one I enjoyed playing stealth was Skyrim with my assassin, and that was because of the random placement of enemies, the AI was quite easy to cheat.